


Matt: Surrender Our Rights and Wrongs

by theinstinct



Series: Break This Bittersweet Spell [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU backstory, Death, F/M, Kanima, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinstinct/pseuds/theinstinct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d put all those murderers under the water. He had been the one to kill them even though his had not been the hands that had taken their lives. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that Matt should be frightened by them. It didn’t seem just either that he still felt so angry that he burned white hot on the inside from it, or that he was almost sick with a guilt that was black as bile.</p>
<p>Like Jackson, he had an undeniable connection to water, but everything was backwards and made a different sort of sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matt: Surrender Our Rights and Wrongs

Swim towards the light, they say, but Matt really wished they had been more specific, whoever 'they' were. 

He hadn't even known what had been happening the first time. There had been no light to swim to, so he hadn't moved. He had been ten and scared and confused, and everything had been dark. No light meant no colours, and becoming blind had been Matt's biggest fear growing up, before drowning stole dethroned the fear of losing the ability to see the multicoloured beauty of the world. 

Matt was ashamed to say that he hadn't understood what was going on when he first arrived _here_. 

_Here_ was many things. It was a sweet breath of air after having his head held down under the water too long. It was his lungs working again. It was milky white light everywhere and steam rising off the mirrored grey waters surrounding him. There were trees all around him, as if they had put down their roots under the water before they had been drowned, too. And just like Matt, they were all dead, naked and without their foliage. They were bone white and ashen, streaked with veins the colour that was almost blue and weeping glassy sap. Matt hadn't known that there could be so many shades of white. 

It was all frozen and very beautiful, but he remembered a greater beauty in people in motion, a certain pair that he’d taken to calling Artemis and Adonis, but he couldn’t remember what their actual names were, now. Come to think of it, he couldn’t even recall what they looked like. There was something wrong with that, there had to be, but everything around him whispered that it was fine. Everything would be fine now. Nothing else could happen. All was right. Matt was safe, safe in the embrace of the water.

And, in the middle of rings upon rings of those trees and the endless water, Matt was sprawled on top of a plinth of snowy stone, though he wasn't certain if hot and cold even existed anymore.

It was apparently where you ended up when there was nothing but light and you tried to swim towards it, anyway.

But white wasn't the only thing there, and the numbness didn't last forever. There was no way to tell how long Matt had been there, but he realised that it wasn't just the water that kept him from moving from where he was. He physically couldn't. Every time he tried to get up, he would be tugged down again. Matt finally looked down and saw that there were red strings tied around his right wrist. Millions upon millions of them, knotted and ragged and strong as iron despite all that. He couldn't have told what the other end was attached to since the string disappeared into the water. He supposed that they were where he must have come from. Unsurprisingly, really––he couldn't remember where he'd heard of it, but red string was supposed to signify fate and destiny, or simply a bond to another person that was inevitable and unbreakable.

Who was the other person, then? Matt couldn't remember. It must be someone he hadn't met yet, because he couldn't say that anyone he knew was connected to him so powerfully as to merit so much red string. The damn things covered his arm from wrist to elbow.

The string grew paler and paler as time passed––a few would lose their colour entirely and streak the great bundle of string with that ever-present white. And then Matt realised something else––the strings attached to him weren't red, they were dyed red. They dripped red, as if with blood, and as soon as he had that thought, Matt could smell it. The string cut into his forearm, but it wasn't what he was smelling.

It was the water. It was always the water, really. Ever since Matt had drowned the first time, it was like he was constantly challenged by it, until even nightmares of being in the water could give him panic attacks. His mum, sickly and hypochondriac that she was, had taken it as a sign that he had asthma. If only that had been the case. 

Matt wondered how she was doing now. Not well. Neither would his father. They were simple, honest, and desperately _normal_ people, his mum a housewife and his dad an editor for a photography magazine two towns over. They wouldn’t know what to do about their son being a murderer. 

Matt wished he could defend himself, but the smell of blood was getting stronger. The water was bubbling, as if simmering, and turning pink. The faces just under the water accused him of his crimes and there was nothing he could do about it. 

“Do you deny it?” 

“Murderer!”

He’d put them all under the water. He had been the one to kill even though his had not been the hands that had taken their lives. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that Matt should be frightened by them. It didn’t seem just either that he still felt so angry that he burned white hot on the inside from it, or that he was almost sick with a squirming, undeniable guilt.

“You killed me first!” Matt yelled back, scrambling to move farther away from the faces, but there was only so far you could move on such a little island of snow. The faces were all around him, bloody and blue and brown with rot. It was all beautiful after a certain fashion, like something he would make a photo out of, but it was horrible, too.

Not that he hadn’t taken those, either. Matt had a hard time telling when he had gone too far for the sake of a photo. When he was intent on his subject, the legality and creepiness of what he was doing seemed negligible and superfluous. How could he explain that pictures were the only thing he was really after? He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be so close to an actual person. He could be confident in social situations because he already knew for a fact that he didn’t belong and that he was an outsider. 

But actually coming into contact with someone, on the level that he fantasised about yet knew he would never live? No. No, no, no. Photographs were perfect and he could make them immortal, but people were brittle and no one actually cared. People were empty and stuck in a loop of insouciant inertia that Matt had no reason to believe he could ever break them out of. 

But that was another wrong the faces in the water decried. Matt lost track of the names that were being lobbed at him, like he was in kindergarten again and comics were the ultimate sign of being a loser. There was nothing he could say. He knew what he had done. 

The faces were like sharks. They could taste his fear, Matt was sure of this. They could taste his fear and weakness and they surged as one towards him. 

Matt threw himself back and he yelled in pain. It wasn’t the faces in the water hurting him, and if he stopped to think about it, what could the dead do to him, who was also dead? It was the strings attached to his arm. They tugged and sawed and cut, splitting his skin and parting his flesh. The snow was a deep red now, and melting where his blood pooled hot. 

It wasn’t the only thing that hurt. Gone was the blessed numbness. It had only been a temporary reprieve. His side had started itching a moment before, but now, it was almost like something was crawling underneath it. It was black and green, however, a giant bruise that flaked and almost throbbed with a tender ache. 

“You were all murderers, just like I am. _Stay away!_ ”

The faces kept coming, and his arm hurt more and more. The strings were black with blood now, and suddenly, it went slack. Matt felt his heart stop and his breath freeze. He couldn’t say why exactly, but some part of him knew that the string was not supposed to go slack. 

“He wasn’t a murderer, but he is just as dead,” the faces spoke with his own voice, and Matt turned to see Adonis by his side. 

Young, so beautiful that he still made Matt ache for his camera, a pencil and paper, _anything_ to claim a part of him, and just as dead as his namesake. In real life, Adonis wasn’t going to wake anemones, and besides, they didn’t grow on snow. Adonis was just dead, lying unresponsive on his back, white and blue and grey. Except his left arm, because from the elbow down, there was nothing but a black ruin of pulverised meat and bone shrapnel. 

“Jackson.” So that was his name. Why remember it when he was dead, now? “Jackson. Wake up.”

No response. 

“You can’t–– _Get up!_ ”

Jackson. Jackson Whittemore. He remembered him. He didn’t want to remember him. Matt only wanted the image of him. He didn’t want the person. He didn’t care about the person. It was the same with Artemis, though he had had his little experiment. 

So why was he so disturbed that Jackson was still not moving?

“I said, _get up!_ ” 

“You killed him,” Artemis hissed by his side. Allison. “Even monsters aren’t safe from you. I guess that’s too much to ask from the likes of you.” She was standing just behind him, but it was all wrong, because her eyes were slitted and yellow, and when she shoved him into the water, black scales flowed over her like water.

“Sink or swim,” Matt’s father told him as he thrashed in the water. Hands pulled him down. He fell fast, even faster when his fingers lost their grip on the edge of his snowy island. He found Jackson’s ankle instead and dragged him down with him. It seemed important that he did that, somehow. 

“Please! Save me! I promise I’ll be better this time!” Matt didn’t know who he was begging. Underwater, no one would hear him. 

It turned out that Adonis wasn’t actually Adonis, and the body he had pulled down with him was not Jackson Whittemore. Jackson Whittemore’s eyes weren’t an acidic green that almost glowed in the red water, and he did not have a mouth full of shark teeth. Something dark loomed behind him like a giant shadow perched upon his shoulders. The creature swam close and wrapped its arms around Matt, who was struggling against now as well by then.

As they sank, the creature that wasn’t Jackson Whittemore wound the red strings that still trailed from Matt’s arm around his throat. As he strangled him, the creature reminded him that another death was coming. 

Matt’s scream was muffled when they crashed into the bottom of the lake, which bristled with fangs of ice. They drank his blood after they broke his ribs and tore open his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I didn't tag this with the 'major character death' tag because the character doesn't remain dead. And, well, I guess Matt isn't a major character either, but he is in my fics because I find his relationship with Jackson so interesting! 
> 
> Next one is either Lydia or Danny. I've already plotted out chapters for Lydia, Danny, Isaac, and Derek. Again, this is sort of a companion for my [Filthy Water Can't Be Washed](http://archiveofourown.org/works/518540/chapters/915951) fic, though Derek's will be more relevant for a future fic I plan to do much later.


End file.
